


The Guarding Dark

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Hotch Is Mom, Rossi is Dad, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who watches the watchmen, indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Guarding Dark

"Jack, I love you buddy. "

He'd refused to look at the UNSUB. Instead he'd been focusing on his son and then on the team. On holding the team up and on holding up Morgan and Garcia on the other end. So they could get through this. Hotch hadn't made sure not to cry, but he'd made sure he hadn't wasted time on rage or on struggling. He'd wanted to make sure everyone else was as okay as they could be and that Jack would have the last sight of his father be of love.

Penelope watches Derek helplessly, watches him trying not to put his fist through a wall. She knows the feeling.

Emily is a little bit the same and a little bit not. "This isn't your fault" she'd said and you can just tell she's looking at Morgan there. "This is his fault, ok. No-one else. His decision. And I don't want to see you wasting your life in blaming yourself, Derek because you are a good guy and you don't need that."

You can hear in her voice that she might not be sure that this will work but damn if she isn't going to try to impress upon the fact that it should.

-

The UNSUB had been going after families of choice, families that people had chosen. Families he perceived had destroyed his own conception of family. Perhaps they shouldn't have been surprised but that's the point isn't it. Victims don't get a choice, don't get an option. Don't get a warning. And so Morgan had been let go, as a witness. And Garcia had been left because she was there to record it, on her screens. She doesn't watch the video after they say goodbye but she does watch at the end, the very end.

She doesn't want the last thing her family sees to be him.

-

JJ says goodbye to Henry quietly, with the thankfulness that he is somewhere safe. "You know Henry, you have a wonderful godmother and she's going to spoil you silly. Garcia, promise to help him get in to college and...." and it's here that like Hotch, she lets her voice break "let him know Mommy loves him and always will, okay."

"I promise" Garcia knows there are tears in her eyes and she lets JJ see them, if only to show that she is loved at this last. "Will and Kevin and Morgan and I will make sure he gets in to Yale, always."

She'd pictured saying goodbye to her family, but not for many years hence and not like this. This isn't a death like Theoden's, this is a death of unfairness.

-

Spencer says goodbye in his own way. He has his own range of coping, but here and now it works because he is just essentially Spencer in this moment and nobody here expects him to be anything but who he is. If that means he makes some jokes as he says goodbye, if that means black humour and no tears then that is what it will be. And he's not looking at _him_ either because when it comes to things like this, Spencer Reid knows exactly what he's going to find important and its certainly not that guy. Definitely not that guy.

It's about telling and the final things of life.

-

Rossi of course, would go down telling the unsub to fuck off. Maybe not in so many words but he does it, giving _him_ nothing. Absolutely nothing the guy can hang on to, can relive. The message he leaves as goodbye is somewhat the same but he gives something else too, something that puts the final nail in.

He ignores him. David Rossi looks straight in to the camera and straight at Garcia and he speaks words of love, of family. Mom and Dad, tag teaming again. It might even get to the point where she can smile at that again, one day. It happened with her own parents, a little - the pain remains but you can balance it out with the good memories, the ones that make the process of continuance a little easier. Because you do go, she knows that. There are things, there are losses that break you but the world must go on. Her job will go and yes, happiness will go on. There are just more scars to remember, more graves to visit.

Penelope Garcia hopes David Bowie welcomes her family to the light and whatever comes next. She'll see them again, she knows that.

-

"Remember, this isn't your fault"

He hears Emily say that, hears his living sisters say that and tries to make it mean something or he gets the feeling Emily will turn up and snarkily haunt him forever and while he'd like that, he knows she wouldn't. Derek Morgan leads the BAU damn well, alongside Jordan Todd and they build a tag team with the younger agents (and you'd better believe you learn that you call in properly when you take a sick day in the BAU) and the agents look up to them, a little terrified, a little in awe. It's never going to be his family, but he's proud of his team and he knows that in the end, Todd is the Secret Ruler Of The BAU.

That's how it works. He and Garcia visit the graves. Alone and sometimes with Jack, sometimes with Henry. Jack, who tries to make everyone feel better and has both his parents gracious way with people and his mothers eyes and laugh. Henry, who looks a little more like JJ every day (a little shot of pain goes through them every time he laughs, because you turn around and expect to see JJ) and their own little tokens of memory. Pratchett themed dolls, photos, little living pot plants. His mom and sisters in Chicago let him have as much or as little space as he needs and usually, he wants to space to see this part of his living family without the physical memory of the others hitting him at every corner.

Derek remembers once looking at a survivor and wondering, how could you do it? How could you go on after almost your entire family was gone. And now he guesses he knows. You pick things up and deal with the world, because the world isn't going anywhere and he'd made a promise, after all.

In this at least, he's not going to let them down.


End file.
